SOUTH BEND, Ind.—Mike Brey does not want to talk about March, but it’s not for the reason you might think. He’s not trying to hide from Notre Dame’s lack of NCAA Tournament success. He very much wants to change that. But his strategy to achieve that goal includes not taking the Irish’s presence in the field for granted.

Here’s the tricky thing, though.

He’s the one who brought it up.

We sat in his office on a Friday morning after Notre Dame had earned a huge victory over Kentucky that will help the Irish be selected to the tournament and perhaps earn a prominent seed, and Brey mentioned March several times, mostly to say he doesn’t want it to be a topic of conversation until that month arrives.

Brey recalled that when the team returned to campus after losing its first 2012 tournament game to Xavier, “I said I didn’t want us talking about March. That can start so early,” Brey told Sporting News. “I said, ‘With everything we’ve got coming back, what I want us to talk about in the summer is competing for a regular-season Big East championship.’

“We’ve never really talked about that on the front end. It’s been more survival: Can we get a bid?”

The Irish have been close to the Big East title the past couple years. They were Pitt’s closest pursuer in 2011, losing out by a single game. They were third last season, although the race wasn’t close as Syracuse ran away to a 17-1 record. ND was picked to finish fourth this time.

It will be a challenge because of what Brey calls the “A schedule.” Each Big East member plays all league opponents once, then four of them twice. ND’s repeat games are preseason favorite Louisville, preseason top-25 pick Cincinnati, St. John’s and DePaul. The schedule wasn’t exactly kind in terms of home/road breakdown, either. The league has four other teams currently ranked; the Irish will play three of them on the road.

Notre Dame is riding a stretch of three consecutive NCAA Tournament bids and five in the past six years. The concern for Irish fans is their team hasn’t advanced to the Sweet 16 since 2003, and that was the only time in Brey’s 12 previous years. In many of those seasons, the Irish weren’t seeded to play to the second weekend, but in 2011 they were a No. 2 seed and fell to No. 7 Florida State.

What seems to be different about this team is that it has Notre Dame’s customary age and experience but a slightly different skill set. The Irish often have been jumpshot-oriented on offense and average defensively. The 2011 team made just under a third of its field goals from 3-point range; last year’s Final Four teams got only a bit more than a fifth of their baskets from deep.

The Irish’s past five NCAA Tournament teams all had defensive issues to some degree. Their average ranking in defensive efficiency, compiled by KenPom.com, was 70th. Last year’s Final Four teams all ranked in the top 10.

Brey acknowledged this, but of the 2013 Irish insists, “We’re better. We’re more engaged. We play it together. We take more pride in it. I think we’re getting a little bit mature where if we’re not having a good stretch offensively as individuals or as a team, it’s not affecting us as much at the defensive end.”

Not all the stats in the small sample size to date reflect that—with a 7-1 record, the Irish are 51st in defensive efficiency—but opponents have shot only 37.6 percent and averaged 58.5 points. So some do. And Kentucky’s talented young squad managed only 50 points, which says something.

More important is that this team will have, in guards Eric Atkins and Jerian Grant, two players who can invent some offense when the opposing defense is stifling the Irish attack. That’s an essential component of NCAA Tournament success.

“I don’t know if we’ve ever had a backcourt like this,” Brey said. “When we stall out, we can make some things happen. At that level, everybody’s guarding. Before if we couldn’t get a stagger screen for Matt Carroll or—then you’re struggling. And we weren’t as good defensively."

The Irish got some impressive contributions in the Kentucky win from freshman wing Cameron Biedscheid, whose 10 points off the bench included two back-breaking 3-pointers. His development likely will permit him to play a larger role as the season advances, and is one reason Brey looks at this team as one that can continue to improve. In 2010-11, he believed the Irish were “a finished product” on the second day of practice.

“We still can get better,” Brey said. “We have to realize that. We’ve got to keep teaching.”

It’s important, as well, that Notre Dame manage the stress on sixth-year forward Scott Martin’s legs and the beatings rugged center Jack Cooley absorbs on a routine basis. Following the Kentucky game, his arms and shoulders were scratched up like he’d just taken a stroll through a football field of thorn bushes. Martin will be given what some NFL coaches call “maintenance days” in practice, and Brey admits there’ll be times when he calls Cooley over for a quick conversation during a contact drill he doesn’t really need.

“We have a group that they’re definitely built for it,” Brey said. “We have a better shot at it.”